Ahsoka, episode 4 - Yay, lightsabers! but... they're kinda meh?

Okay, so, on the upside... how refreshing is it to finally have a piece of Star Wars media that uses lightsabers! After so much Mandalorian and rebel alliance material in the shows so far, we actually get to see lightsabers in action again! Which, let's be honest, lightsabers the single coolest and most iconic thing Star Wars has ever produced.

But, unfortunately... they look kinda lame? Like sequels kind of lame? I mean, they cut through trees, which is good. But... most of the lightsaber battles so far are shot in close-ups, which means you can't really see the battle. I don't need to see Rosario Dawson's face while she's fighting. I want to see the actual lightsaber fight... the whole thing! Which means you need to zoom out more often. I don't remember any prequel lightsaber battles being filmed this way. Close-ups were used sparingly for moments when we needed to see the characters' faces and emotions. Other than that, we got full-body shots that showed the characters' movements.

Does Rosario Dawson look bad when she's doing the footwork, or something? Is that why they did it this way? They're doing it with Sabine and Shin too, but not as much.

And what the force-forsaken fuck was that spinning move from the fake inquisitor-dude and how in the blazes did Ahsoka defeat him just by stepping into his spinning blade? I replayed it five times and I still don't get what happened. I mean, it looked badass at first until I realized I had no idea what had happened. And then Ahsoka just... stood there? With her lightsaber still above her head... for a reeeeaaallly long time. Like an unnecessarily long time. And sure, the not-inquisitor-guy exploding in Buffy-verse Vampire fashion was unexpected and kinda cool. But I still don't know what the bloody hell happened?

*sigh* New Star Wars is still not really doing it for me.

You know what the real problem is with adulthood? I was raised to believe that life was episodic television. You know, the case-of-the-week/mission-of-the-week style of tv from the 90s and nearly 2000s. Every week in my childhood, the Enterprise encountered a new alien race or a new problem and then at the end of the day, Data solved the problem or Picard negotiated a treaty with the aliens, or Dr. Crusher found a cure for the alien diseease... and then they went home to the ship and flew off to their next destination. Or SG-1 went on an off-world mission, got into trouble, and then Sam Carter and/or Daniel Jackson got them out of trouble, the problem was resolved and they went home. Or Sherlock (substitute any other mystery-solving detective/doctor/fake-psychic/what have you) faces a mystery and after hyjinks and twists, the mystery is solved, all is resolved, and the mystery-solvers go home to Bakers-street or wherever.

No one told me that life is not episodic tv. The new problem doesn't politely wait until you've resolved the previous problem. There's always multiple problems that just keep piling up! And more often than not, issues are never resolved! We just get more issues on top of issues.

Why can't my life be episodic? I want my issues to politely resolve one at a time. Why are all the problems coming at me all at once?!

Spoilers: The Boys season 3

Warning: rant on new fandom in-coming (don't worry, this fandom is not going to become a mainstay on this blog).

I've been watching The Boys over the past few weeks, largely because I had heard The Boys was a good deconstruction of the superhero genre. And on the one hand, it is. But season 3 is increasingly making me kind of uncomfortable with the way that deconstruction is also just reinforcing the glorification of vigilantism, which is the bread and butter of the superhero genre. It's one of those cases where they are deconstruction the genre so thoroughly that they've looped back around to just reinforcing all of the same tropes they were deconstructing/critiquing in the first place.

Like... okay, vigilantism is appealing in theory, but you have to have the critical awareness to realize that "the heroic vigilante" is just a myth. It's a re-purposing of the Robin Hood legend. It gives us a single "good guy" who will stand up to the "the man" or "the system," and if he's a "noble thief," then the vigilantism becomes a good thing. It's not the bug, it's the feature. But the problem is that the myth of the "noble vigilante" is not real and it's not possible in real life. There is no case when it is good for one person to operate above and beyond the law just because "they mean well" or they make the case that they are best suited to handle tough situations (Cap's "the safest hands are our own" mantra is bullshit. It's appealing bullshit, but it's still bullshit). In real life, we need accountability. We need equal justice under the law (and yes I am well aware of how flawed the justice system is, thank you, but that doesn't mean we just throw the entire legal system out the window. We still need laws. We still need to strive for a more just society). Vigilantism is the antithesis of all of that.

But now here we are in season 3 of The Boys, and... we're rooting for the vigilantes again. Butcher and Hughie going off the reservation and teaming up with Solider Boy is exciting because we have seen over and over again that working within the system will never work, so obviously we are hoping that working outside the system and doing "whatever it takes" will prove successful. But... damn, that's dangerous. And I'm not sure if the show is self-aware enough to know that this is what it's doing.

On the one hand, sure, they've made it clear that Butcher and Homelander are the same in some ways, that they are mirrors for each other and both have the same core of ruthlessness and hate (although... do they? They are both ruthless, yes, but Homeland is driven by ego, a yearning chasm of insecurity, and an unquenchable lust for recognition; while Butcher is driven by the deep pain of loss, feelings of rage at his own helplessness, and an incessant fear that he is, in fact, that monster that he is fighting, the same monster that his father was. But I'm getting off track...). While in some ways, we know that Butcher isn't "right," that what he is doing is incredibly sketchy and far too similar to the worst of the Supes misdeeds... and while we do have Annie and M.M. both standing up to Hughie and Butcher to say, "yeah, this isn't the right way to do this, I'm not on board here, you're wrong and messed up to think this is all okay." But while the narrative tells us all of that, I think the vast majority of the audience feels that Annie and M.M. are right, but also that they're too naive. There is always a part of us, as viewers, that is going to be hoping Butcher will win, that he'll get to rip Homelander apart and put an end to this by killing all (or most) of the Supes. Right? It's not just me, right? I think we are still on Butcher's side, more or less. (Side note: I have no intention of reading the comics, but I have heard that Butcher is the final villain in the comics... but I don't believe that's where the show is going, not least of all because Karl Urban has succeeded in making Butcher sympathetic far too often for that to work).

So I can't decide if the show is just undercutting its entire point about the way power corrupts and we need oversight / accountability... or if it is intentionally playing with the idea that part of us wants to see the vigilante win and defy all of the rules, even while we know that it's wrong. Is the show that self-aware? I'm not sure. When I heard the premise of the show, it seemed obvious to me that this was a "Team Iron Man" philosophy that says no one should have unchecked power. But now... it seems to also be saying, "well, since the people/agencies that should be a check on power are all corrupt, the only way to stop those with unchecked power is to exercise that power ourselves." In essence... "the safest hands are still are own." And yeah, that's not it, my dudes. Whatever you think you're advocating for, this ain't the moral highground you're looking for. It's just leading us back to the simplistic glorification of the vigilante.

On another note...

I heard so many people call season 3 "a masterpiece" and I'm like... really? It's addictive, I'll give it that. And there are some pretty amazing moments of pathos where the actors manage to convey a lot with very little. It seems to be relying less on spectacle (with some exceptions) and giving the characters moments of quiet emotion. So there's a lot that's good here.

But there are way too many instances where they didn't even bother to write the gags and the supposedly "ironic" moments. They just straight-up ripped stuff out of the real life news. A-Train stars in Kendall Jenner's Pepsi commercial. The Deep tries to pull off the famous "Imagine video" from the early Covid days. The Hawk-whatever guy just parrots every apology we've ever heard from police departments whose officers have killed yet another unarmed black man. Gunpowder repeats straight-up NRA talking points. Homelander tells a female reporter "that's such a nasty question" when she asks a completely valid and innocuous question about what to tell people who feel scared of Covid... I mean, of Supe-terrorists. Like... you've run out of imagination and are now just taking Trump's dialogue from real press conferences and giving it to Homelander? At least last season there was a tiny veneer of distance between Stormfront and the "Stormchasers" and the real life Patriot Prayer/Proud Boys. But now... they're not even trying to make up these moments in the show or use a bit of creativity to reference real world events. We all saw the parallels (they were never terribly subtle) but those parallels worked better when they weren't just... copy-and-pasted from the hellscape that is reality. We've seriously lived this whole Trump-induced wasteland with his botched Covid response and deaming comments about women (and the "only I can save you" BS) and dumbass militias trying to drag us back to the past and racists giving shitty apologies and the celebrities trying to be relatable and failing because they only care about their brand. We don't need you to dramatize exactly the hellish bullshit what we've been living with for the past four years! It's just "change the names" copy-and-paste from real American life, which is occasionally funny, but is quickly becoming tiresome.

And in spite of all of those criticisms, I am still going to go right back to binge-watching the last two episodes today. Because it is addictive, even if the nihilism is definitely fucking with my head at the moment. Should there be a trigger warning for "do not watch this show when your depression is acting up"? Probably. But it's too late now, I'm already hooked, whether I want to be or not.

I hate being the only person in my family who acts like an adult and knows how to communicate.

How my life feels right now:

I'm just out here trying my best and other people keep cussing me out for existing in vague proximity to them.

Like... can I just catch a break somewhere?

If people insist on being aggressively wrong about factual information, can they at least choose to be wrong somewhere else so I dont have to put up with their self-righteous responses when I point out that they are factually wrong?

Like... take your stubborn refusal to understand facts and basic math somewhere else, please.

I was just thinking yesterday about how the two major "twists" in the Obi-Wan Kenobi show so far are actually... super obvious (and I don't mean that in a bad way). But SW fans have taken so much for granted, and we always (ever since the original trilogy) have had more knowledge than the characters. We knew that Anakin would fall and the Empire would rise and all of that. So we assumed that we knew how everything was going to play out. And those assumptions meant that we didn't see the obvious twists heading our way... which is why they worked.

(spoilers through the fifth episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi)

Twist 1: Obi-Wan doesn't know Anakin survived Mustafar and that Vader is still out there.

This really should be obvious. But SW fans (myself included) are dense. We have always made assumptions based on what we knew, forgetting how little we actually knew. I think this was part of why so many people disliked the prequels. They has made assumptions about how those events would play out, and then they didn't play out according to the fans' preconceived assumptions.

But in this case... we all knew that Anakin survived Mustafar, so we assumed that Obi-Wan knew that as well. But of course he didn't know that! How could he have known that? There was no reason to think that Anakin could have survived those injuries! As far as Obi-Wan knew, Anakin and Padme were both dead; Luke and Leia were orphans, and Yoda and Obi-Wan wanted to hide them from Palpatine. And remembering that puts everything in a different perspective. It's not as foolish to leave Luke with his biological family because Palpatine wouldn't likely look there for a child he didn't know existed. And as far as we know, Palpatine knows little to nothing about Owen Lars. So... no problem, here! It's a reasonable plan to leave an orphan with his family in the Outer Rim. And by the time Obi-Wan knows that Anakin/Vader is alive, Luke has been with his family for ten years. It would be irresponsible to take him away from his family now.

I was a little thrown off because in Legends, Obi-Wan found out that Vader survived something like a few months after Order 66. He saw Imperial propaganda in a bar and realized that the dark figure who is called Vader is obviously Anakin (or something along those lines... it's been years since I read that book obviously). So I assumed that Obi-Wan knew by now... but there was no support for that assumption, and this makes more sense. So as shocking as this twist was, it makes complete sense and it's perfect.

Twist 2: Reva isn't loyal to Vader... she's plotting to kill him because she knows he is Anakin, the man who killed her Jedi family and betrayed them all.

So the set-up with the younglings in the temple, at the beginning of the first episode, made it easy to deduce that Reva was a Jedi youngling who somehow survived Order 66. And once you've made that connection, it should be simple to deduce that Reva knows Anakin is Vader because she saw Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker when she was a child. And it should be obvious that when she saw Anakin in the temple that day, she would think Anakin was in the temple to save her. We literally have another child who says exactly this in Episode III. The very first images we saw of Order 66 back in the film included a Jedi child who was hiding from clones and then came out of hiding when he saw Anakin. We have this little child asking Anakin for help, looking to him as a teacher and a leader. "Master Skywalker, what do we do?" This tiny child wants Anakin to tell them how to save themselves, and instead, Vader murders him. Of course any child who saw Anakin as a savior and then saw him murder every person she'd known would end up feeling betrayed. Anakin did betray Reva and every other Jedi, children and adults, who lived in the temple. He should have protected those children and he didn't.

And we know that Reva feels like she is "owed" something and that she thinks protecting one's family is the most important thing--she tells Owen as much in the first episode, the same episode where we saw her as a child with her Jedi teacher and her Jedi siblings. Of course she knows Anakin is Vader. And of course she blames him for the murder of everyone she's ever known! How was this not obvious?! But the setup leads us to follow all of our own assumptions that inquisitors are just wanna-be Sith apprentices and they must all be competing for Vader's attention. Because they are bad and that's what Dark Siders are like. We were deceived by our own assumptions until suddenly the twist literally "twists" those assumptions into a slightly different shape that makes perfect sense.

This is exactly how plot twists should work. They should be unexpected, but make complete sense after they are revealed.

And for the record, a bunch of the so-called "plot holes" or "continuity errors" the perpetually angry SW fans are complaining about are also just "twists" that defy fandom assumptions that have been made...without evidence. We assumed that Obi-Wan and Vader never met between the duel on Mustafar and the duel in A New Hope. We assumed Leia knew nothing about Obi-Wan and had never met him. We assumed Obi-Wan never left Tatooine and that he'd spent two whole decades faithfully communing with the Force and learning from Qui-Gon. But dude... NONE OF THOSE THINGS WERE EVER STATED! People inferred, people read between the lines, people interpreted this line or that line to imply this. But all of those assumptions... just assumptions.

And some of them don't actually make a lot of sense, except that we've accepted them for so long that we forgot they don't make tons of narrative sense. Obi-Wan wasn't totally convinced that Anakin was beyond redemption in Episode III. But he's 200% convinced that Anakin can't be saved, that Vader can't be saved, and that Vader and Anakin aren't even the same person anymore, by the time we get to Episodes IV and V. That's a big shift in perspective with no explanation for how Obi-Wan arrived at that conclusion. We all assumed that Leia trusted Obi-Wan implicitly because Bail Organa told her to, which... fair. But that assumption doesn't preclude her having other reasons to trust Obi-Wan (and reasons that explain why she doesn't even pause for a second when Luke uses the name "Ben Kenobi" instead of "Obi-Wan Kenobi"). We all assumed that Qui-Gon could talk to Obi-Wan immediately in order to teach him the "mysteries of Force ghost-ness." But honestly, that never made sense and felt tacked on at the end of Episode III. How did Qui-Gon learn these secrets? His body didn't disappear the way Yoda's and Obi-Wan's did when they "passed on." They disappeared and then could appear as ghosts. But Qui-Gon? Nope! And Yoda never explained how Obi-Wan was supposed to "train with Qui-Gon," at least not that we saw. We just assumed it would happen easily. But showing that it is not easy, that Obi-Wan isn't sure how to connect to Qui-Gon, and that he has lost faith in the Force makes so much more sense! And honestly, whatever this ghost-training involves, it should be difficult! Otherwise every single Jedi would have the ability to be a Force ghost, whereas that was clearly not the norm in the Jedi Order. It clearly wasn't normal to hear the voice of your dead master. Obi-Wan didn't think it was possible. Yoda didn't know it was possible. We are all used to it because we've seen Luke interact with the ghosts of his dead teachers since 1977! So we assumed, yeah, that's a thing that Jedi do. But it isn't normally. And it must be difficult. And of course Obi-Wan hasn't mastered that when he's only halfway through his exile.

So all I'm saying here is... the twists are totally logical and well executed. Most of these "continuity errors" aren't really errors, and SW fans are just clowning themselves because we've all accepted our own headcanons as canon for twenty to forty years, and it's a long-standing tradition for SW fans to freak the fuck out when they find out their assumptions/headcanons were never true and they were just making shit up all the time (which is not to say that George Lucas and now Disney are not also making shit up as they go along... but really, fandom headcanons are not more valid... except when it comes to the sequel trilogy... in that case, everyone's headcanons, including JJ Abrams, are all equally valid. Because let's be honest... what even was that fever dream except the crazy headcanon of two fans who didn't talk to each other enough to get their stories straight?).

Tony Stark-antis need to learn some chill and basic narrative comprehension skills. Like really? Again with this bullshit?

Dude, we are ONE episode into Falcon and the Winter Solider and people are already using it as an excuse to resurrect anti-Tony Stark bad takes. Like... WTF fandom? Do we really have to go through this with every single post-Endgame mcu project? Really? When are ya all gonna learn some comprehension skills and actually pick up on what the narrative is trying to say?

Say it with me: the bank loan scene was a not-very-subtle jab at systemic racism and the way black veterans have been treated in American for decades. It’s not an excuse to anti on about how “tOnY sTaRk DiDnT pAy ThE aVeNgErS CuZ hE’s A eVIL bILLIonAiRe!”

Are you all so afraid of talking about systemic racism that you have to blame Tony Stark for Sam not getting a bank loan? Really? After a year of BLM protests and extensive awareness-raising for systemic racism, and y’all still don’t get it?

That’s the real world issue that the narrative was trying to lay out, and it’s the in-universe explanation for that scene, which is trying to address out-of-universe real-world issues. But now let me be petty and go back to the in-universe issues of whether Sam got paid... because this whole take is just pissing me off and I have to rant. So...

Sam hasn’t had a paying job in seven years, and he chose to leave the Avengers when he defied the Sokovia Accords because he blindly follows everything Cap says without ever thinking for himself. He’s been badly written ever since he showed up at the end of Age of Ultron. And that bad writing means he’s just been playing as Cap’s lackey, and in doing so, he CHOSE to leave the Avengers, to reject a government paycheck, and take his chances on the run for two years as a fugitive. So yeah. Two years, no job, no pay. And as far as we can tell, he didn’t do a whole lot of awesome saving-the-world in those two years either. He was just hiding out with Cap and maybe punching a couple of low-level terrorists or something .There certainly weren’t any alien invasions that he stopped in that time. And after that, he was dust for five years. That’s not his fault, obviously, but no one can expect to collect a paycheck while they don’t exist. That’s why the post-Blip economy is probably a bit wonky at the moment. So in total... seven years. No job. No paycheck. Part of that is consequences of Sam’s actions and part of it was through no fault of his own. But yeah, after seven years with no paycheck, there’s a good chance he’s got money issues. Did banks seize assets of those who were blipped? Totally possible.

But now, in-universe, let’s remember that all this bullshit that antis are spewing about “Tony Stark should have set aside money for his friends and teammates” and “Sam saved the world from aliens so many times, so he deserves a pension” and “Tony could set up a trust fund for all of the avengers because they’re his friends!” Yeah. That’s all 100% BS.

First off, Sam Wilson and Tony Stark are not friends in the MCU. Never have been. In Civil War, Tony said, “I know we don’t know each other very well” because they don’t! They’ve NEVER FOUGHT TOGETHER ON THE SAME TEAM! Think about that. Tony wasn’t an active duty avenger between Age of Ultron and Civil War, and that’s the only time period where Sam was an active avenger. So they were never really “teammates” and they weren't friends. They were, at best, acquaintances or coworkers who never worked closely together.

And during that time, when Tony appears to have had little contact with the avengers, he was bankrolling the team. He says, “what, am I doing here? Running a bed and breakfast for a biker gang?” He made the compound and supplied all of the avengers’ tech. He gave them free room and board. It sure looks like they had everything they needed, so it’s entirely possible (even likely) that Tony was paying the Avengers during this time. But that’s all it was. Two years when Sam was an active avenger, Tony wasn’t, but Tony was still bankrolling the team. After that... Sam was a fugitive and then he was dust. So he spent 7 years with no job, and two of those years were by choice, because of Sam’s rejection of being an avenger and refusal to accept a government paycheck. He chose to be a vigilante with Cap, and vigilantism doesn’t supply a paycheck on its own.

And finally... Sam has never saved the world! And he’s only fought aliens during Infinity War and Endgame. So where are people getting this whole, “but Sam should be paid because hE sAvEd tHe wOrLd!”? Uh, no. Not really. He helped in Endgame. He tried to help in Infinity War. And that’s good. That’s important. It’s not nothing. But it’s also not saving the world. In this first episode of TFATWS, Sam literally accepted thanks from a guy who said “you brought my wife back,” when Sam had nothing to do with that. Bruce snapped and brought back all the dusted. Sam had no role in helping for that. Now I get that Sam was probably just being polite. But it’s contributing to this narrative that Sam did more then he actually did. Naw, man. Marvel never cared about Sam Wilson until five minutes ago. So they’ve never actually shown him doing anything that was, well, important. And that’s a fail on Marvel, but if we’re looking at it from a purely in-universe perspective... Sam Wilson doesn’t deserve any more or less than any other government/military contractor. Because that’s what he is now (he’s not an Avengers because the Avengers no longer exist), and that’s what he was up until the last scene of Age of Ultron. Most of his existence, he’s been a solider. He’s a military guy. So if he’s not been getting paid, that’s on the military. Tony, at most, would have paid him for two years of his time and work. The rest is all on the military, including Sam’s current finances.

Which means, you want to blame someone for Sam’s finances and his inability to get a loan? Well, there are three reasons. 1. Sam chose to leave the Avengers to become a fugitive with Cap, which means he had no job and no paycheck for two years. That’s the consequences of his actions. 2. the military either stopped paying him at some point, or hasn’t been paying him enough/quick enough in the past six months since the Blip. Military pay for veterans and veterans’ access to benefits is a real problem, but it’s a military problem. And it’s possible that any back-pay or pension that Sam is owed is tied up in red tape, which is probably only exacerbated by his time as a fugitive (which might mean he was made ineligible for any pension). And finally 3. systemic racism. His sister was pretty clear on the fact that “people like us” are the ones who always seems to be denied loans. She was saying that there is money available for loans, but it always go to white folks first. Maybe try listening to the black character explain why they believe they aren’t getting paid. Sam (when not on the run or blipped) was living a pretty cushy life as a supporting avenger for two years. He apparently didn’t have to think about how systemic racism could affect his family because he was temporarily insulated from it. Now that layer of protection is gone because he’s not living in a cushy compound away from the real world (which, for the record, is probably a good thing. I think the Avengers being so isolated from the real world is probably partially what led to the problems in Civil War). So now Sam is going to be confronted with the reality that systemic racism is real and can affect anybody, regardless of your fame or your job. And after the past year of discussions on race, the fandom shouldn’t be surprised by this narrative.

I am so sick of every single MCU project post-Endgame being twisted by antis who just want to use it to hate Tony Stark. I mean, seriously. Give it a rest, people! Try reading the narrative the way it was intended and stop twisting it for your hate-Tony-Stark obsession.

I’m still not over Avengers Endgame.

Tony Stark is just such a great example of real growth, the kind of growth that isn’t easy or linear. There are mistakes, there’s some backsliding, there are moments when fear takes over and it causes him to become reckless or too closed off or to put up masks to protect himself. But all of that is part of the growth process. Because growth is a process. We don’t just all suddenly arrive at being a “good person” or a “hero.” We aren’t born knowing how to be good and how to overcome our own frailties. We have to learn it. And it’s damn hard. But in the end, that process of growth leads to Tony always becoming a better version of himself. He’s still tony. He doesn’t have to stop being himself. His core personality doesn’t change. He doesn’t have to abandon or give up parts of himself along the way. The only thing he puts aside are the masks and the insecurities and the fake parts of himself that he constructed because he thought it was who other people wanted him to be. And what’s left is a very human, very fallible hero who has spent a decade becoming a better version of himself.

That’s just amazing!

And he deserved better than Marvel gave him. We all did.

Tragedy is moving and compelling, but it’s not the only way to celebrate heroism. For once, we deserved a story that wasn’t tragic. A story where all of that character growth was celebrated and rewarded. Because we desperately need growth in humanity and in real life.

So for once, just for once, we really needed an ending for Tony Stark that celebrated that growth and rewarded it--not celebrated and mourned it.

I should be over it by now. But I’m not. Tony Stark deserved better.

Maybe I should have known that this week wasn't a time when my emotions are able to handle... literally anything. But I watched marvel's little tribute to itself/teaser for upcoming movies and...oh boy was that not a good idea. I kinda loved the Stan Lee voice over but I really hate that the only thing we're ever gonna see of Tony Stark in tribute montages or even the marvel logo is when he uses the infinity gauntlet. Like, that was an awesome moment, but that's not all that his character was, you know? And we get lots of crowds cheering for Cap over and over again, leading into a montage of characters from upcoming movies that I just... do not care about at all. After Stan Lee going on about how we're all connected and part of this universe and it's about connection... yeah, marvel, I feel no connection to anything in that trailer. Even before I started watching marvel movies, I always found the trailers exciting and they made me want to get hyped...even when I didn't care about superhero movies. The excitement of the trailers is why I finally gave in and watched more than just the bits and pieces of mcu that I'd caught on TV. But these teasers... I just don't feel anything about all these new characters and don't particularly care to get to know them.

I guess it's old marvel movies, comics, and some of the Disney+ shows for me. As much as I really want to go to a movie theater again and have that experience, I think Black Widow is the only one I would bother to see in theaters (until Doctor Strange, I guess).

Also, hard to get excited for movie theaters to reopen when you're in the state with the worst case rate and everything is shutting down again because people have stopped vaccinating and the experts have basically given up on the U.S. ever reaching herd immunity because 30% of people believe junk facebook posts over actual scientists and vaccine experts. Yeah. Everything just sucks here this week, and I'm just venting. 😕

The Russos think Steve’s ending made the movie “hopeful” rather than “depressing,” and I’m like...what?

While Black Widow and Iron Man get tragic, heroic deaths, Captain America gets a different kind of emotional ending – heading back into an alternate past to live a happy life with Peggy Carter. Not only was it a logical end for his character arc, but it offered hope where killing him would have destroyed it. “Once you kill a beloved character like [Tony], you've got to have hope at the end of the movie in some regard, and the only person to give you that hope is the other co-lead,” says Joe Russo. “Had we killed both the leads, I feel like people would have been walking out into traffic after the film. The intention is not to destroy people, it's to hopefully tell a complex and dimensionalised story in a way, that makes them feel a varied range of emotion.”

(via Empire)

Just read this in Empire’s summary of the “spoilers” they got from interviews with the Russos and Markus & McFeely (it’s #24 in their list of “juicy” tidbits) and I’m just like...what?

So the goal wasn’t to “destroy people” with that ending. They gave us brutal, tragic deaths for Tony and Natasha, but figured that Cap’s “hopeful ending” would save the movie from being too depressing? I think they miscalculated because that math does not add up.

I think they missed the fact that Tony is the most human (and therefore the more relatable) character and that Natasha has been, for the bulk of the MCU, the only real female hero representation we’ve had (until Age of Ultron, she was literally the only one, and it’s only since the women of Black Panther and Hope Van Dyne showed up that we’ve actually had a variety of female heroes). I think they are missing how utterly depressing it is to kill off the flawed characters who have struggled towards redemption and a life of heroism--killing off the guy with PTSD and anxiety who has struggled to cope with mental illness and to become a better person who has made up for past mistakes, and killing off the abused woman who has fought to regain her agency and make her own path in life, who was also the only woman on the team for way too long--in favor of saving the traditionally handsome, stereotypically “good” white guy. He gets the hopeful ending. They don’t. And that’s supposed to save the movie from being too depressing? Really?

And okay, I am not saying that Steve doesn’t deserve a happy ending. I’m saying that saving the old-fashioned hero, the one with no flaws who happens to look like the narrow stereotype of white Americana (a stereotype so few Americans actually fit into), and killing off the characters who are less than perfect and less than the ideal of white, blue-eyed, blonde perfection is not hopeful...unless you identify with the white male "good dude” archetype. I guess if you wholeheartedly believe you are righteous and good, and you have had that idea reinforced your whole life, then maybe you would identify with Steve and see his happy ending as the reward for all of his years of doing the right thing. But as a woman who struggles with mental illness, that narrative isn’t hopeful to me. That narrative tells me that only people who are stereotypically "perfect” and fit into this narrow definition of what it means to be “good” get happy endings--and yeah, apparently Hollyowood’s go-to story to reinforce that message is a white guy who “wins” the girl as his “reward” for being the “white hat” good guy. It’s such a tired trope, and in 2019, it’s over-done more than it inspires some sense of hope.

But let me be clear: the problem is not that they gave Steve a happy ending. It’s that they only gave Steve a happy ending. Tony and Nat are dead. Pepper and Morgan are mourning. The last images we see of Rhodey are of him with tears in his eyes (seriously, this franchise and even the fans are continuously doing Rhodey dirty. If one guy should be worthy of the hammer, it’s Rhodey, not Steve...but right, he’s not “the lead” and he’s black, so...). Thor is still depressed and has lost everything; he’ll probably go on a journey to heal and make a new life for himself, but it’s not a happy ending, not even particularly hopeful since he has no clear direction and is left adrift. Bruce gets no ending at all: his character is literally ignored at the end and we have no idea what will happen to him. Zero resolution there, and not much reason to hope that there will be more for his character later (the Empire article also suggests that Bruce/Hulk is a symbol of hope in the movie because he moves on to be an active hero during the five year time gap...but since they show us almost none of this, again, it doesn’t feel particularly hopeful). Clint is mourning Natasha (but he is the closest of the other characters to get a happy ending--and Joe Russo basically says that’s because he identifies with Clint as a father and family man). Sam looks confused and Bucky looks vaguely sad. The Guardians are a broken family trying to piece things back together, and Nebula is broken too (still). These characters don’t get happy endings. Sure, some of them have a chance to rebuild and live on. But the story doesn’t focus on giving them “hope” to salvage the depressing ending. We are given no real promise that things will look up for these people or that they have hope for their futures. It’s pretty much either bittersweet (i.e. Sam getting the shield) or very bleak. Steve is the only one who is truly happy and we end the movie on images of only him being happy.

So the problem is that the only person with a well-resolved happy ending is the white, male paragon of virtue. All of the other characters, who could have been on complex story arcs and could have been used as symbols of hope...they get nothing. We could have ended with characters rebuilding Avengers Compound, with scenes of Wakanda rebuilding and helping the rest of the world, with Rhodey taking the younger heroes under his wing, with Pepper showing Morgan her dad’s legacy or a shot of Morgan tinkering with parts of an iron man suit as a bit foreshadowing, with nods to the next generation taking up the mantel, and with Steve looking proudly at all of that, knowing that they followed his example and Tony’s legacy. That would have been a hopeful ending that all of us could find some hope in. But instead, the movie focuses almost exclusively on Steve--so “hope” is defining as a white dude getting the girl and dancing with her in the past...a regression, rather than progression, moving backward rather than forward. That’s what these writers and directors consider hopeful.

If Steve got some version of a happy ending (hopefully one less ham-fisted than what we got) and we also had much more focus on hopeful scenes for the other characters, then I would feel less like walking out into traffic after this movie. But as it was...Russos, your attempt was not successful. Your hope is only for the perfect white male heroes that you clearly idolize, but it’s not for women or POC or people with mental illness or people who have made mistakes or people who just don’t fit that “perfect hero” stereotype. And that’s not hope. That’s depressing as fuck.

I mean, at least Joe Russo actually called Tony a “beloved character,”  acknowledging that they knew his death would be devastating and they would have to mitigate that somehow...they just clearly had no fucking clue how to do that, so it failed royally.

Last year around this time, I was already starting to write Avengers Endgame fixit fic. I had like three distinctly different ideas that eventually spawned into five different stories, most of which I started and at least wrote a piece of...but I never finished any of them. And that’s making me super depressed. Like...shouldn’t I have finished a fixit fic by now? If it’s been a year since the movie came out, is it too late? Has the “market” for fixit fics dried up? Has everyone but me moved on? Maybe I should just give up since I never seem to finish anything?

I’m just having a lot of Tony Stark feelings today and really regretting that I haven’t finished my pile of fixti fics.

The problem with trying to write fixit fic for Avengers Endgame is A) I’ve only seen the movie once, so it’s hard to recall details, and B) there are at least three different and contradictory explanations for how time travel works and what the hell happened with Steve at the end, so it’s impossible to decide which of those contradictory and unsatisfactory explanations to follow in my fixit fic. Hence I now have two different fixit fics that are each 2.5k long and not anywhere near done. *sigh*

Tumblr makes me feel old. Like, seriously, am I the only one who finds this interface bizarre? What am I supposed to be doing here? Okay, well, I’m just going to keep liking and re-blogging Santiago Cabrera pics until I figure it out or something. If anyone who I followed comes here wondering why I followed them (is that a thing? or does no one care who follows them?), just know I’m a Musketeers/Salvation/Merlin/Doctor Who/Killjoys/assorted-other-things fan who got lost on the Internet and is looking for pretty pictures to brighten my day (or if I followed you, it may mean I have read your fanfic). And if said pretty pictures inspire me to get to work on finishing various fanfics, then all the better.

Aaannnnd I have reached the part of my evening where everything either makes me swearing-up-a-storm angry or makes me burst into tears.

Because emotions are fun, right?

Apparently I should just never leave my house and never interact with people.

Today I’ve been in a car accident (not my fault) and been informed that I must meet with my boss tomorrow to discuss a complaint made against me (by someone who refused to do their job until I asked them to do so for the third time).

It doesn’t matter if I do everything right, I am still blamed and I still have to deal with all of the mess.

It doesn’t matter what I do; I always lose.